‘For the first time, I didn’t care’: Da Brat reflects on how falling for her wife made her come out

According to the rapper, falling in love with her wife, Judy Dupart, made her want to show the world how happy she was.

Da Brat got real about how the music and entertainment industry made it difficult to be open about her sexuality, and what finally pushed her out of the closet. For most of her time in the spotlight, she did not share her queer identity.

“It was against the rules back in the day for a female artist,” she said on Angie Martinez’s “IRL” podcast, where she was being interviewed with her wife, entrepreneur and CEO of Kaleidescope Hair Products Judy Dupart.

“You couldn’t do that, you couldn’t tell that,” Da Brat said. “Remember, Ellen DeGeneres lost everything back in the day. You could either choose that or your career.”

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The rapper, actress, and fashion icon told Martinez that it wasn’t until she met Dupart that she considered sharing her sexuality with the public, saying, being with Dupart made her think, “F**k everybody, you gon’ see this love.”

Martinez joked that the relationship was not a well-kept secret, and Da Brat admitted that she was so in love with Dupart that it made everyone else’s opinions irrelevant. She and Dupart reflected on how being together at Essence Fest in 2019 was the tipping point.

“For the first time, I didn’t care. I just wanted to walk through the crowd holding her hand,” Da Brat said. “I wanted her to sit that a** in my lap. I was in love and I wanted everybody to know.”

Her team was even caught off guard by how openly lovey-dovey the couple was. “[They were] so used to me not being like that for years,” she continued. “But this one right here made me just want to be like ‘I want people to see how happy I am and whose making me feel this way.'”

Da Brat and Dupart met in 2017 and dated privately before making an Instagram-official announcement in 2020, where Da Brat not only acknowledged the relationship publicly but also came out by doing so.

In a profile with Variety after confirming the relationship, she said about her sexuality, “I had boyfriends in high school, and then I dated guys and girls, so I guess for a long time I was bisexual.”

She and Dupart were married in 2022 and now have a child together, a son named True Legend.

“Everything about her made me want her to be mine forever,” Da Brat told People Magazine after the two were married. “And I felt like I knew it not much longer than from the day we met.”